From fertilized egg to adult, the cells of the human body go through an astronomical number of divisions. During division of any of the body's roughly 30 trillion cells, DNA from the initial cell must be split precisely between ...

Researchers at the Cell Cycle Research Group of the Bellvitge Institute of Biomedical Research (IDIBELL) led by Ethel Queralt have reported in the journal PLoS Genetics an article which delve into the regulator mechanisms of mit ...

Researchers at Waseda University in Japan have for the first time directly observed the "molecular motor", called Xkid, that plays a critical role in facilitating the proper alignment of chromosomes during ...

Biologists at Heidelberg University have discovered new approaches for the treatment of cancer. They investigated how a special signalling molecule, the epidermal growth factor (EGF), stimulates the separation of chromosomes ...

The human body contains trillions of cells, all derived from a single cell, or zygote, made by the fusion of an egg and a sperm. That single cell contains all the genetic information needed to develop into ...

A group of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have for the first time described the structure of the active site core of topoisomerase II alpha, an important target for anti-cancer drugs.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The effort to classify life into various groups has been a bumpy ride. Prior to the 1900s, living things were usually pegged as either plants or animals – period. By the middle of the ...

Researchers from Virginia Tech and Oxford University have proposed a novel molecular mechanism for the living cell's remarkable ability to detect the alignment of replicated chromosomes on the mitotic spindle in the final ...

If you can imagine identical twin sisters at rest, their breath drawing them subtly together and apart, who somehow latch onto ropes that pull them to opposite sides of the bed -- you can imagine what happens ...

The Stowers Institute's Gerton Lab has provided new evidence to clarify the structure of nucleosomes containing Cse4, a centromere-specific histone protein required for proper kinetochore function, which plays a critical ...

Lars Jansen's work on the formation of the centromere, a key cellular structure in powering and controlling chromosome segregation and accurate cell division, has just earned him a paper in Nature Cell Bi ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- It’s about as long as the width of a human hair and only half that length across. So it’s tiny — measured in millionths of a meter — and extremely tricky to manipulate. But the meiotic spindle plays ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Dartmouth Medical School researchers have found two proteins that work in concert to ensure proper chromosome segregation during cell division. Their study is in the January 2009 issue of ...

Chromosome segregation

Chromosome segregation is a step in cell reproduction or division, where chromosomes pair off with their similar homologous chromosome. In mitosis, a complete copy of each one is made. In meiosis, one chromosome from each pair migrates to opposite ends of the cell and the genes are split to make a gamete.